For his Carnegie Hall recital debut, Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki offered 16 preludes by six different composers spanning three centuries, followed by the 24 examples of the genre in Chopin’s Op.28. While the preludes in Bach’s 1722 Well-Tempered Clavier served as a prototype for the later selections in this program, each of the Baroque master’s examples was originally paired with and functioned as an introduction to a fugue in the same key. Over a century later, Chopin reinvented the format, freeing it from its introductory purpose, and allowing it to serve as an independent character piece, often with an improvisatory quality, rather than requiring it to follow a specific musical agenda, a notion that extended into the 20th-century preludes of Rachmaninov, Szymanowski, Messiaen and Górecki – all of whom were represented in this intriguing program.
The evening opened on a familiar note with a gorgeous rendition of Chopin’s D flat major, the so-called “Raindrop Prelude”, the composer’s longest work in the form and one of his best-known. Lisiecki’s interpretation conveyed a wonderful combination of drama and refinement, setting the tone for the whole program, one which allowed the listener to compare and contrast ways in which different composers have embraced the open-ended musical form.
Much of the first half, within which each brief work segued directly into the next, consisted of compositions by very young composers – three by Karol Szymanowski at age 18, three by Olivier Messiaen at 20, and two by Henryk Górecki at 21. Lisiecki played them all with imagination and refinement but was most impressive in Szymanowski’s delicately syncopated D minor (Op.2 no.1), which he imbued with a profound sense of melancholic yearning, and in his high-speed delivery of two preludes from Gorecki's Op.1 – the harshly dissonant First and the overtly virtuosic Fourth.
Lisiecki's wistfully poetic rendering of Rachmaninov’s early but justly famous C sharp minor Prelude from the composer’s Morceaux de fantaisie was also commendable, as was his self-assured account of the G minor from his Op.23. In Bach’s brilliant C minor Prelude, he did an admirable job of accentuating the melodic line in the many rapid-fire configurations.
But the biggest showpiece in this recital was the pianist’s spirited delivery of Chopin’s Op.28 cycle, the masterwork that constituted the second half of the concert. Lisiecki seemed very much at home with the composer as he shaped a masterly, multicolored reading that accentuated the character of the individual preludes – each in a different key, each conveying a different mood and exploiting a different keyboard technique. His sensitivity to the dirge-like harmonies of the A minor prelude contrasted sharply with his rapid-fire delivery of the bass ostinati in the G major. His exuberantly rhythmical take on the bubbly D major led into a remarkably subdued treatment of the melancholy B minor. The replay of the “Raindrop Prelude”, heard as a standalone piece in the first half of the concert, was even more beautiful when experienced as part of the greater whole. And while the B flat minor, with its huge leaps and octave progressions, was more impressive as a technical feat than as an expressive endeavor, the impassioned performance of the D minor that ended the set packed a powerful musical punch, emotionally as well as technically.
There was an encore: a gracefully rendered version of Robert Schumann’s Romance in F sharp major which brought the evening to a serene and tender close.
